by John Updike
“La force du destin,” Buchanan responded. “Beaucoup des hommes américains sont capables, mais peu achèvent, dans les chances d’élection, la position plus haute.” He feared, from the failure of her regal face to pounce upon his meaning, that he had lost her; perhaps achever was the wrong verb, and position imprecise. And yet, even in his uncertainty, and the possibility of inadequacy at the highest reach of his mission here in Russia, he retained a sense of masculine comfort with this woman, who had recently risen from her bed of accouchement, delivered of another Grand Duke. She is remarkably fond of dancing in which she excels, Buchanan wrote Hannah Slaymaker from his apartment on the north side of the Neva. The following year, he wrote John B. Sterigere, I think I may say, I am a favorite here, & especially with the Emperor and Empress. They have always treated me during the past winter in such a manner as even to excite observation. I am really astonished at my own success in this respect. Her doughy Germanic softness in his arms, the careful simplicity of her French, the silken patch of moisture beneath his hand, even the slightly puzzled look in her eyes, which were brown shot through with a honied pallor, all catered to his comfort, his feverish illusion, amid the swinging pressures of the dance, of mastery—of their two weights connected by an attraction kept taut. The empress’s lips, thin but rosy, with a dent of latent smile—of self-appreciation—in the corners, were parted as if waiting for him to give her reason to speak. So Buchanan went on, adding a shrug of his arms to the conjoined movements of the waltz, “Mais nous parlons des possibilités imaginaires. Je voudrais seulement que le traité de commerce et de navigation entre nos pays se conclure; donc, je retournerai à mon état natal de Pennsylvanie, où j’assumerai les devoirs and les plaisirs très modestes du citoyen privé. Ma carrière publique achève”—yes, this was the correct use of the verb, but for emphasis he amplified—“fait sa fin avec cette mission ici, en Russie.”
She smiled; her small round teeth glinted, and the disarming gap where an eye tooth has been pulled. Her jewels and eyes sparkled alike; her naked plump shoulders shone with their glaze of human sweat. “Je pense que vous avez longtemps le mal du pays, de votre pays chaud et fertile, dans le Pennsylvanie, alors qu’il faut vivre dans notre royaume tellement froid, tellement vaste et vieux et barbare.”
“Ah, que non—pas barbare! Pauvres, peut-être—la plupart des gens sont pauvres et aussi, dans la vue d’un homme américain, très superstitieux.”
“Dans les Etats-Unis, personne ne croit?”
“Au contraire, votre Majesté—tous les gens croient dans le bon Dieu, parce que—ça va sans dire—Dieu a les donné, a nous donné, tant de bonheurs. La terre si grande, les beaux temps, les bois, les fleuves, et, au-dessus tout, notre constitution sage et généreuse—toutes les choses, les dons du bon Dieu! Mais, en comparaison du Dieu russe, notre Dieu tient à distance sublime; dans cette manière, il met à l’épreuve notre sincérité, et nous donne l’espace pour l’exercice de la liberté!” Buchanan was not sure he had done justice, in these clumsy idioms, to the mighty subject of faith in his native land, but from a tension on the empress’s face, like that on a bulging drop about to run down a windowpane, she was waiting her turn to speak.
“Votre pays est très curieux à mon sens—une Russie pleine d’Allemands! Mon mari,” she went on brightly, “attend beaucoup de votre pays.”
He was not sure he had heard correctly. Attendre, he supposed, in the sense of “expects.” The czar, absolute ruler of the world’s largest terrain, seemed implausibly miniaturized in the intimate phrase mon mari. Confused, Buchanan responded merely, “Vraiment? Pourquoi?”
“C’est simple, n’est-ce pas? La Russie a besoin d’ amis, maintenant que la France et l’Angleterre ont conclus leur traité sur la question belge. Aussi, l’opinion publique et la presse européenne ont été peu aimables à mon mari concernant la question polonaise, et particulièrement les atrocités alléguées de la guerre, sa suppression héroique de leur révolte méchante. Dans toute l’Europe, le mouvement révolutionnaire naisse—ça bouillonne! Et quel pays est la source du mouvement, à l’origine? Le votre! Ainsi, s’il y soit ce traité maritime, l’empereur pourra dire, ‘Voilà, mes bon amis, les américains, les gens les plus révolutionnaires au monde—ils ne résistent pas à ma politique polonaise!’ ”
“Je vous comprends, Majesté, et je vous remercie très sincèrement pour votre explication lucide.” In fact her blithe words did help Buchanan better to understand why the commercial treaty, after years of surly inaction on the part of Russian officialdom, was now, with some prodding from Count Nesselrode, the Foreign Minister, and Baron Krudener, the Ambassador to the United States, making sudden headway against the objections of Count Cancrene, the Minister of Finance, and Monsieur de Bloudoff, the Minister of the Interior; certain tariff reductions (on hemp, sail duck, and hammered iron) in the proposed Congressional bill of 1832, together with a marked increase over the last year of Russian imports of, especially, American sugar, of course had helped, as had Buchanan’s judicious and flattering remarks in those of his dispatches bound to be opened and read by the emperor’s spies. But this insight, that a despotic government might relieve itself of revolutionary pressure by striking a trading deal with the most progressive power on earth, he owed to the empress, and the curious propensity of her feminine sun to shine upon him. His last official communication from Russia, an accounting to Secretary of State Louis McLane of his final days and his official farewells,b included this mysterious—almost romantically so—paragraph:
I had, on the same day, my audience of leave of the Empress who was very gracious; but what passed upon this occasion is not properly the subject for a despatch.
Buchanan’s letter to McLane includes a number of passages that deserve quotation. Emperor Nicholas, for instance, inquiring as to Buchanan’s homeward itinerary, expatiated upon the worrisome French people. The French were a singular people. They were so fickle in their character and had such a restless desire to disturb the peace of the world; that they were always dangerous. They had tried every form of government and could not rest satisfied with any. French emissaries were now endeavoring, every where, to excite disturbances and destroy the peace all over Europe.
And Buchanan describes—with how conscious a parallel, one wonders, to Ann Coleman’s death—the virtual suicide of Nicholas’s oldest brother, the handsome, erratic, and in the end melancholy Alexander I. Throughout his last illness, he refused to take medicine and thus suffered his disease which was not, at the first, considered dangerous, to become mortal. When Sir James Wylie, his physician, told him, that unless he would submit to medical treatment his disease must prove fatal; the Emperor Alexander regarded him earnestly and exclaimed, in the most solemn manner, “And why should I desire to live?” He continued to reject all remedies and his death was the consequence. On the truth of this anecdote you may rely. There was no foundation for the report that he had been poisoned.
In parting, the Emperor Nicholas embraced and saluted the stout Pennsylvanian in the Russian manner, a ceremony for which I was wholly unprepared, and told me to tell General Jackson to send him another Minister exactly like myself. He wished for no better. The Russian manner was more fully described in Buchanan’s diary of June that year: Upon taking leave of Antoine, I submitted to be kissed by him according to the Russian fashion, first on the right cheek, then on the left, and then on the mouth. This was my first regular experiment of the kind.
One wants to imagine Buchanan happy in Russia, amid the four-horse carriages, the gilt, the unmelting snows, the unending balls, the stately pace of court intrigue, the flirtatious ladies (some speaking English) of the royal circles. As with Benjamin Franklin in the French court a half-century before, an American in the plain dark clothes of a democrat charmed the court like a dwarf, like a black-skinned Ethiopian—a delegate from a different sort of space. When the world was emptier, it was larger; there were blanks on the map wherein explorers could win fame, and travel skirted the real
ms of fantasy. The diary Buchanan kept of his trip to Moscow in June of 1833c seems happy, with its descriptions of pious monks and rascally muzhiks in tanned sheepskins. Of the Reverend Father Antoine, the archimandrite or abbot of Troitza Monastery, sixty-two versts north of Moscow, Buchanan seems almost enamored: His long beard was of a most beautiful chestnut color, and made his appearance venerable notwithstanding his comparative youth. I shall never forget the impression which this man made upon me. Bronze figures on the door of a church in Novgorod were strange and barbarous figures not unlike those of Mexico. He was far from home, and was amused when a Princess Ouroussoff in Moscow inquired if the United States still belonged to England and whether they spoke the English language in America. Conversation with another hostess, Madame S——, would have been agreeable but for the constant interruption of a parrot which screeched as if it had been hired for the occasion. Moscow, since its conflagration in 1812, has lost, however, in a great degree, that romantic and Asiatic appearance which it formerly presented. The cumbrous and rude magnificence of palaces irregularly scattered among Tartar huts, has given place to airy and regular streets in all directions. It appears to be in a prosperous condition. That which chiefly distinguishes it from other cities is the immense number of churches. Their cupolas, in all colors and of all forms, rising above the summits of the houses and glittering in the sun, are very striking and imposing objects. Also imposing, though less attractive, were the armies of peasant women offering themselves as wet nurses to the directors of the Foundling Hospital, or Imperial House of Education: It was quite a novel spectacle for me to pass through the long ranges of women, with infants in their arms, or in the cradle. Everything was clean and in good order; though the women were anything but good-looking. He was more favorably impressed by the poor but noble children of the Alexander Institution, orphaned by such misfortunes as cholera, recruited from all over the empire, 250 boys and as many girls. He was especially impressed by the girl students, collected at dinner, all dressed alike, in green frocks and white aprons, which came over their arms.… Previous to taking their seats, they sang a hymn in Russian as a blessing. Their performance was excellent. Here the goodness and piety of the female heart shone out in a striking manner. His escort, a Mr. Gretsch, editor of the Bee in St. Petersburg, made a speech in Russian, explaining that Buchanan was the minister of the United States, a great and powerful republic. That the people there were well educated and well informed; but that every person had to labor. That their Government was a good one; but no paternal emperor existed there, who would become the father of orphans and educate them at his own expense. At the Troitza Monastery, Buchanan was impressed not only by the chestnut beard of the young archimandrite but by the uninscribed tomb of Boris Godunov, by magnificent specimens of embroidery wrought by the Empresses Elizabeth, Anne, and Catherine the Second, and by a crystal in which the image of a kneeling monk was miraculously embedded. At Peterhoff, at an imperial fête,d he was enchanted by the extent and ingenuity of the waterworks—they place candles under the shutes of the water and thus have an illumination under the water—and by a carp which has been in the lake for a century, with a collar round its neck. It, with others, comes to the edge of the water at the sound of a bell, every morning, to receive its breakfast.
Happiness! What is it? It can be breakfast. It can be a foreign country, where we are treated as a guest, and our ignorance of the language shields us from many difficulties. At the fête, the royalty in attendance and numerous dignitaries, including Buchanan, mounted singular vehicles on four wheels and drawn by two splendid horses which the diarist can describe no better than by imagining a double sofa with a single back, on which ten of us could sit back to back comfortably, five on each side. [Later,] we slowly promenaded through all these walks, the sides of which were covered by immense crowds of spectators. The effect of the illumination was brilliant. The Grand Duke Michel was on horseback, and great precautions were evidently taken, on account of the Polish conspiracy.
Yet it leaves, happiness, as little residue in the memory as pain. We have in the end only a few flat images painted in calcium on the wet stuff of brain cells, a set of signs no more enduring than a fresco sunk in crumbling plaster. We read in Young’s Night Thoughts of gorgeous tapestries of pictur’d joys! Just following the three lines which Buchanan or Judge Franklin incorporated into Ann’s obituary, the next three run
O ye blest scenes of permanent delight!
Full above measure! lasting beyond bound!
A perpetuity of bliss is bliss.
And a bliss short of perpetuity, the implication is, is hell. We want life eternally, or else its joys are hopelessly poisoned; its tie to bliss breaks at every breeze. Buchanan was happy, whirling in the rosy rounded arms of Aleksandra Fedorovna. “D’une santé délicate,” we are told by the La Grande Encylopédie touchingly, “elle dut souvent quitter la Russie pour aller vivre à l’étranger. Son souvenir est resté populaire chez les Russes.”
Mon souvenir de Madame Arthrop est imparfait. J’ai oublié beaucoup, depuis cette escapade. And yet we sought, in the approved manner of the Ford era, to give each other happiness, for a stolen interim. Before Jennifer’s return to our booth, Ann contrived, in the guise of resuming humorous denigration of her “minimal” room above us, to let me know its number, casually yet distinctly, “five oh eight,” with an eye-flare—an alteration of hazel iris as of Wendy Wadleigh’s blue when carnally entered—that left no doubt of the centrality of the signal being given. That imaginary price tag fluttering near her face had become the size of a flag of surrender. I remember the number still, 508, each curved numeral plump with sexual invitation.
When our little threesome broke up, as it shortly did—Jennifer off with her girl-pals toward an attempt at nocturnal study, her mother into the elevator to attempt a night’s sleep away from her chintzy Connecticut bedroom—there was nothing for me to do but stroll outside, beneath the aloof and scudding moon, skip diagonally down the fascist breadth of stairs, chafe my hands and huff my breath against the spring chill as if this would explain my behavior to a hypothetical witness watching me, and rapidly stride through a well-worn pondside grove where entangled young couples fell apart at my passing like tapped chocolate apples. Then, a conspicuous insouciance wrapped around my racing heart, I went diagonally back up the broad stairs, around to the other entrance to the Student Center, which was populated by now with only a handful of torpid stragglers, and sidled toward the elevators, where in time, at the push of a button, a steel box appeared, prepared to make me vanish like a rabbit in a false-bottomed hat. My guilt at not being home on schedule, able to answer the telephone with its torrent of needy nagging, I suppressed with the reflection that, as de Tocqueville was among the first to point out, Americans prize freedom above all other goods. Tied though I was, to two women, five children, a mother, and an unfinished book, did I have no rights of movement? Was this the Soviet Union, where one needed a permit to go from Omsk to Tomsk? Was this already 1984, with Big Brother’s sister watching my every move? I flicked myself through the rubber-edged elevator doors, pushed the green number that spelled ascent and adventure and Ann, and with halting steps silenced by the orange carpeting made my way down the corridor. I had never been up here in this part of the collegiate dominions before. Arrows indicated odd numbers to the right, even to the left. 502, 504, 506, bingo.
Before Ann answers my sly little knock, a mere backhanded tap of the knuckles that chivalrously gave her the out of not hearing it, if her mind and mood had changed, let me, Retrospect editors, place the moment in a historical context. Gerald Ford, in his two years and five months of Presidency, presided over a multitude—dare we say millions?—of so-called one-night stands; a tenet of this era was that you did not need to like someone very much to fuck him or her, or know them very well. Fucking was the way in which you got to know them, these hers and hims, and to decide how much you liked them. Even so, heterosexual contacts never attained the amazing facility a
nd number of homosexual contacts in this era, when a mere hole cut in a plywood partition in a bathhouse created access enough. Between men and women, the old courtship dances were still enacted, but in wonderfully accelerated form.
Ann answered my knock instantly, as if poised by the door; she was already in a bathrobe, in a room where but one dim bedside lamp, its parchment shade decorated with a pointing Labrador, added its beige glow to the moonlight pressing on the drawn curtains. We tightly embraced in wordless relief. The bathrobe was a sensible flannel, but I soon noticed she wore nothing beneath it. I kept saying her name—“Ann! Ann!”—until she betrayed annoyance. My absurd name lent itself to no such betranced intonations.
“I’ve never heard it said that way,” she at last protested. “My husband calls me Annie. Annie Sure-Shot. Because I always come.”
Her husband, not hitherto evoked, borrowed a phantom reality from this jocose salute—he was thoroughly familiar with this hefty body and the direct, vital, possibly coarse personality inside it. He would himself be a big man, to kid her thus fondly. He wore a fake-gold collar pin beneath the knot of his necktie and white-collared shirts with a fine blue stripe and shoes that were solid-black wingtips in an extra-wide size. He was a bit of a dude, a bit of a gangster, a solid family man with some flings on the side—a man in love with all the angles life can be approached by, with no time for books, for history, for doubt. A single impulsive tug at the flannel belt revealed his wife’s glories. Ann Arthrop had her daughter’s pneumatic impressiveness, the curves of her affected by four decades, as an old river swings ever wider, but still a swaggeringly fine figure of a woman, who bestowed herself upon me with the amused efficiency of a suburban mother laying out a big tray of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for her children and their playmates on a Saturday afternoon. Hers was an overflowing femininity; her buttocks overflowed my hands, her breasts so swamped my mouth and nostrils I gasped for breath. “Ann,” I could not help repeating, at the moment I entered her. I had turned off the bedside light—whose doggy shade was partnered with a ceramic base showing green-headed ducks taking wing at sunset—and could not see her eyes. She was matter-of-factly slick, accepting me with a certain somber swallowing motion of her shadowed eye sockets, yet revealing to my agitated, flurrying kisses upon her mouth the tension of a possible laugh.